Chinese Theater Improvements Work -- Big Box Office Increase

from the amazing-what-a-little-work-can-do dept

Last month, we noted that the movie industry in the US might want to steal a few pages from the playbook of the Chinese movie industry. While the American movie studios whine and complain that they'll never get people to come to the movies, the Chinese movie industry (where counterfeiting movies is a much, much, much bigger problem than in the US) decided to compete by recognizing that movie-going is a social experience and coming up with ways to improve that overall experience. Would you believe it worked? The latest studies show a huge increase in the box office take in China last year. Movies are entertainment -- but it's not just the content. If the industry worked on ways to make the movie-going experience, itself, much more enjoyable, it wouldn't matter if even they, themselves, made the content available for free download. People can drink alcohol at home, and they do, but they still go out to bars, and pay much more to do so, because it's part of the social experience. You don't see the liquor (or bar) companies freaking out about all this "home drinking."

Movies

I don't go to out to the movies because of boorish behavior on the part of other patrons. Too many movies ruined by rude yapping. When I take a stand on something, I stick with it. I bought my last GM car in 1973, and I went to my last movie about 10 years ago.